Encity

(A recent trip to the metropolis, the city seen as an entity).

Sticking out my tongue
as if an upturned palm
testing for rain,
I taste the cinder-like city air
candle warm and fetid,
fast-food smears, are
vivid pavement art
inspected closely by critical pigeons.
The incessant traffic clank
squealing, caterpillaring slowly,
microbes inching through concrete arteries
depositing a toxic cholesterol
upon the ancient stones.
Here everyone is struck dumb
faceless, incognito, bowed and busy,
no friendly bobbies,
just their wailing warnings,
new sirens that proclaim the threat
now comes from within and not above.


© Graham Sherwood 10/2014

Colourless

(Justice isn't always black and white).

Struck blind under a brilliant gold spotlight,
an ivory-coloured justice, cowering, shields her plaintive blue eyes
from the jaundiced, septic yellowing cowardice
bowed above her.
There is no black cap for this white star
as crimson garnet stains now dried ochre from brick-red brown
fade grey as a memory
and the avaricious green capital is quenched by a young rose’s life.


© Graham Sherwood 10/2014

Faith

(Placing myself firmly as doubting Thomas).

What if it's all a fiddle,
you know
Jesus and all the other guys,
and I've spent all this time
being good for fear of what might happen
if I were not.
I know the cosmos was a gigantic fib,
the animals too,
man and woman
and the miracles can all be explained away,
but why oh why, after all this time
Is there still a word called faith?



© Graham Sherwood 10/2014

Marsden

(Feeling abroad,even in one's own country).

Wedged like cheese
in the scissors of the Coln,
smeared up the sides like a butty
smoke and stone, music, different tongues
catch my ear
tease my eye
wet my lips.

Bank Bottom’s broke
and cloth is cut more carefully,
spring long gone
the chance of a cuckoo, to
catch my ear
tease my eye
wet my lips.

Black Standedge tunnel burrows the
glorious autumnal moors,
hiding darker secrets still,
I’m mind to cower as voices
catch my ear
tease my eye
wet my lips.


© Graham Sherwood 10/2014

Astrolabe

(A picture from A Sunday Newspaper Magazine).

Fresh coffee and stale bedclothes,
outside, wet earth from new rain and
the click of a spunky robin,
even before I open my eyes
tell me it’s morning.
The sheet slips on purpose
as you’re already fixing me a stare,
both erect
we know that waking sex
is on the horizon.
But not before I unfurl you
like a chart, a mariner’s map
where I study the perilous shallows and
mark the safety of warmer, deeper waters
before deftly sliding into safe haven.



© Graham Sherwood 10/2014